History And Human Relation

THE CHRISTIAN AND HISTORICAL STUD?

And modern science has been beneficial for Christianity
in that it has forced Christians to disentangle their faith
fr$m theories of the material universe; it has made
religion cease to be plausible except as an essentially
spiritual thing* On the other hand, the essential effect
of Christianity on the form of scholarship that has been
described is one not merely congenial to science itself
but absolutely indispensable to it—namely, to increase
the necessity for intellectual humility.. The worldliness
of modern man is not the result of the devising of the
modern scientific method and is possibly rather a
characteristic of modern urban civilisation. And if we
say that at least the scientific attitude gives great leverage
to the worldliness of worldly-minded men, it can
equally be said that it gives great leverage to the
spirituality of spiritual men, for it is in itself a neutral
instrument. Even if they are not scientists or historians,
men do occupy much of their day in some sort of com-
merce with concrete things. The director of a cathedral
choir who forgot the importance of worship, and lived
rather for music as such, is seduced by the world in the
same way as the student who makes science the very
end of all his endeavours and the sum of all his interests.

m

If history is of some importance by reason of the things
which it can establish scientifically, however, large areas
of it are by no means so positive as this phrase would
suggest to many people. In a similar way we might

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